Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has reached California’s 2020 renewable energy goal three years ahead of schedule, and now delivers nearly 80 percent of its electricity from greenhouse-gas free resources.

The European Union can boost the share of renewables to 34 percent of its energy mix by 2030, triggering hundreds of billions euros in investment and accelerating reduction of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

When the winning bids for Alberta’s renewable power auction were announced in December, jaws dropped. The winning projects were approved at a record-breaking low price of C3.7 cents per kilowatt hour — the lowest price for electricity anywhere in Canada.

The 690-MW Karahnjukar hydroelectric project, in Fljotsdalur Valley of eastern Iceland has achieved “best practice scores” in several categories of the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP), according to the International Hydropower Association.

The attitude towards corporate sustainability is shifting. What once started as “greenwashing” annual reports, is increasingly framing and shaping operating models, business processes, and even core products — sometimes driving the enterprise to new markets with unexplored opportunities.

Snowy Hydro Ltd., Australia’s largest hydropower producer, is considering raising as much as A$2 billion ($1.6 billion) by the end of 2018 for a project expansion, which will boost its 4,100 megawatt capacity by as much as 50 percent.

The objective of PtG technology is to enable the balance of supply and demand for power in electricity networks with renewable energy. Importantly, as the use of renewable energy continues to grow there will be an ever-increasing need to support ramping and smoothing of renewables and to enable storage of the over-production via transfer of PtG on an as-needed basis.

France is hoping to send a message about its potential role in the world's hydropower sector with the announcement of preliminary studies that will ultimately lead to the launch of tidal energy tenders.

“We think that 2025 will be the turning point where the cost of an EV [electric vehicle] car, the same EV and internal combustion engine, will be the same,” he told the Financial Times. “That will be a turning point for the customer.” Nissan, through its global alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi, is the world’s largest electric car producer, selling more than 500,000 since launching the first battery Leaf car in 2010.

On Tuesday February 13, Anbaric Development Partners (ADP) announced that it had gained approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the right to develop a shared transmission system, which it says will enable Massachusetts to fully harness the potential of offshore wind power.

A 50-year old company has a solution to provide clean drinking water and power for regions that were hard-hit by the hurricanes last fall. Aldelano Solar Cold Chain solutions is providing off-grid refrigeration, water generation and power generation equipment to Antiqua, Barbuda and the British Virgin Islands.

With waste-to-energy technology taking a front seat in the effort to deal with municipal waste in growing regions, some question whether these processing facilities aren’t doing more harm to the environment than good. Researchers at the University of Buffalo are planning to address that concern with what it says will be one of the most comprehensive and quantitative comparisons between municipal waste combustion and landfilling.

2018 should be the year that Southeast Asian solar hits its stride. That was the clear headline from the 35th ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Ministers on Energy Meeting: “ASEAN calls for energy investment.”

At the opening of the ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting (AMEM) towards the end of last year, Philippine Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi called on energy investors and policy officials to find new ways to meet the region’s monstrous energy needs.

Kenya will introduce a royalty for geothermal-power producers under a proposed new law. Fees will be levied at a rate of 1 percent to 2.5 percent of revenue generated from the energy source within the first decade of a geothermal license being issued, according to the draft Energy Bill presented to lawmakers Wednesday. The levy will then climb to between 2 percent and 5 percent, the bill states.

Scientists have observed that the electricity sector contributes to 35 percent of the carbon emissions in the U.S. every year. And as climate news piles up, there is a growing movement among ordinary people to do something.

Renewable energy market momentum will continue into 2018, even if the policy needle continues to flutter in the months ahead. As utilities and clean energy firms will tell you, the world doesn’t wait for policy certainty. Consider this: emissions from power plants in 2017 are on track to be less than those from transportation for the first time in 40 years. Opportunities abound.

With renewable energy undoubtedly entrenching itself as a global industry over the last decade, what will the next 10 years bring? The short answer is “more growth” and notably, “self-sustaining growth.” As the market evolves, growth will this time be supported by advancements in battery storage technology. While developing markets will see demand for power continue to grow, the same trend will likely flatten out for developed markets, though the expected roll-out of electric vehicles could add to demand.

On Thursday, February 15, 2018, the governing body that oversees the electric power grid in the U.S., the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), voted unanimously in favor of adopting a new rule that would remove the market barriers that now prevent energy storage from participating in the wholesale energy markets, aka, the bulk power grid.

There is a lot of interest in the idea of 100 percent renewable energy both from a political and technical perspective. To understand some of the issues surrounding this goal it is useful to look at smaller systems where high penetrations of renewables are starting to become more common.

When the Block Island Wind Farm (BIWF) foundations were put in place in 2015, many fishermen were worried. How would these giant metal formations set into the ocean change the game for commercial and recreational fisherman? Would they restrict fishing, causing these small business-owners to lose money and their livelihood?

In what is being called a first for the U.S., Maryland has committed $750,000 to an energy storage tax credit program for 2018. The Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) yesterday said that it now is accepting applications for the program.

Countries and entities negatively affected by solar tariffs set by the Trump Administration in January on imports of crystalline silicon PV cells are beginning to seek redress — with the latest action taking the form of a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of International Trade.

By connecting off-grid solar-powered systems to the cloud, a city or utility official can monitor, control and manage street lights, telecom systems, security cameras, and other critical infrastructure from a smartphone — anywhere, anytime.

Did you know there are alternatives to standard silicon solar panels? Or that someday soon, you might be able install a solar panel that is 50 percent more efficient than the average silicon PV solar panel?

A new infrastructure rebuilding plan released this morning by the Trump Administration puts current environmental safeguards in serious jeopardy, but it is not entirely without inroads for support of clean energy.

Today’s topics include how the Trump administration is affecting solar manufacturing in the United States – Will the 30 percent solar tariffs drive it up? We’ll also look at the recently released solar jobs census, which shows a drop in solar employment numbers for the first time in seven years. Is Trump to blame? Lastly, we’ll look at the proposed budget for the U.S. government.

Motivating young people to take an interest in renewable energy and engineering is critical to our sustainable, long-term energy future. In this episode, hear how one program provides that inspiration with remote controlled solar cars, with guests Noah Davis, executive director of Solar Rollers, and Jayvin Krzych, a Solar Rollers alumn and engineering student.

According to job numbers released this week by The Solar Foundation (TSF), the solar industry employed just about 4 percent less people in 2017 than it did in 2016. The Solar Jobs Census found that 250,271 Americans work in solar as of 2017, representing a 3.8 percent decline, or about 9,800 fewer jobs, since 2016. This is the first year that jobs have decreased since the Solar Jobs Census was first released in 2010.

If the energy industry learned anything in 2017, it was that energy systems are highly vulnerable to damage from hurricanes, wild fires and other natural disasters and work should be done to make the world’s electric grids much more resilient.

The offshore wind market does not see as much capacity installed in a given year as its onshore counterpart. Despite that, the sector is showing higher growth rates and steady success at reducing financial risk and cost.

Renewable energy capacity increases faster than any other technology, as clean energy has never seen such high demand. A decline in investment is not due to a lack of interest, but more significantly, a considerable drop in the costs of green energy technology.

When I started at Renewable Energy World in the fall of 2007 as a part-time news editor, the year 2020 seemed eons away. At that time, it was easy to write about how much of a particular region’s electricity would be supplied by renewable energy by 2020, because even though the numbers were very small in 2008, with 2020 so far away, predictions seemed easily plausible.

Morocco adopted a new energy strategy in 2009 to reduce its dependence on energy from abroad, in addition to the limitation of its greenhouse gas emissions, thus contributing to the preservation of the environment.

Macquarie’s new program will help develop so-called infratech companies. Eligible projects include those focused on energy storage and electric-vehicle charging networks. Applications will be accepted throughout the year starting this week.

A joint venture started by the Rocky Mountain Institute and an Austrian company exploring the potential of blockchain on energy transactions has attracted a new round of partners and financing in the past six months.

U.S. private equity and hedge funds are backing an effort by Ethiopia to turn itself into an exporter of electricity to the region, channeling at least $4 billion into geothermal projects across the nation.

Rajit Gadh of the Smart Grid Energy Research Center breaks down the sectors involved in vehicle-to-grid technology, identifying the path to widespread adoption for V2G and the resulting benefits to the power grid.

In the face of what it calls “challenging industry dynamics and other risks that could otherwise hinder its commercial performance,” the Bonneville Power Administration has released the BPA 2018-2023 Strategic Plan to help it adjust to the changing hydropower market.

The Trump administration is poised to ask Congress for deep budget cuts in the Energy Department's renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, slashing them by 72 percent overall in fiscal 2019, according to draft budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Enel SpA, Europe’s largest utility, is in talks to sell power from wind, solar and other renewable energy plants to the Swiss cryptocurrency company Envion AG, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Vigor, based in the state of Oregon on the U.S. northwest coast, will construct the Ocean Energy OE Buoy hydrokinectic wave energy convertor for deployment in 2018 at the U.S. Navy Wave Energy Test Site (WETS).

The tools that utilities are using to try to understand the value of distributed energy resources (DERs) such as batteries and solar PV along their grids was a hot topic in all five sessions in the Energy Storage Track at DistrbuTECH 2018.

The question of fast-tracking energy storage was discussed during DistribuTECH 2018 in San Antonio Texas last week in a session called “Fast Tracking Energy Storage: A Look at the Projects that Fulfilled the Aliso Canyon RFP.”

ZIMBABWE is expected to be one of the major global players in the production of processed lithium, a main component in the manufacturing of electric car batteries with Australian (ASX) listed Zimbabwean mining concern, Prospect Resources having set sights at extracting and processing the mineral this year.

In what should have been a surprise to no one, U.S. President Trump, in his State of the Union speech, made no mention of climate change, advanced energy, clean energy, renewable energy or energy efficiency.

He mentioned energy in only two sentences during his 80-minute speech, recapping what he views as his accomplishments over the year in office.

“We have ended the war on American energy and we have ended the war on beautiful clean coal,” he said.

As Australia begins to expand its plans for more wind farms backed up by batteries, Singapore-based Nexif Energy has broken ground on a 212-MW wind farm in South Australia that will include fast-response storage capacity.

Yesterday JinkoSolar announced that it had signed an agreement to supply 1.75 GW of high efficiency modules to a U.S. counterparty. The announcement also stated that the company’s board of directors had authorized JinkoSolar to finalize planning for the construction of an advanced solar manufacturing facility in the U.S.

Fake news, politics and social media impact more than elections. There is no question that the credibility of American institutions and news sources has suffered in the past year, from the combined influence of continued vilification of the media, retracted news stories and the ever-growing use of social media platforms. But by how much?

The ex-head of the Obama administration’s energy department believes energy storage will remain too expensive to meet long term urban power storage needs, and believes chemical alternatives will need to be found.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced his state is rejoining the multi-state, bipartisan effort to reduce carbon pollution, known as the regional greenhouse gas initiative (RGGI).

RGGI launched in 2007 as a partnership of ten states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Gov. Christie pulled New Jersey out of the multi-state partnership nearly seven years ago.

The rationale for imposing tariffs is complete bunk. Most, if not all, of government support for the solar industry in China has now been withdrawn. President Trump is pretending to protect U.S. manufacturing jobs, though in reality the decision will cost nearly 23,0000 U.S. jobs in the downstream segments of the industry, according to estimates by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Falling costs for solar power have led to an explosive growth in residential, commercial and utility-scale solar use over the past decade. The levelized cost of solar electricity using imported solar panels — that is, the solar electricity cost measured over the life of the panels – has dropped in cost so much that it is lower than electricity from competing sources like coal in most of America.

So far in January, Duke Energy filed three renewable energy programs with the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) to expand renewable energy options for its 3.2 million customers in the state.

The Solar Rebate, N.C. Shared Solar and Green Source Advantage programs are part of a portfolio of customer offerings the company is proposing as part of the Competitive Energy Solutions for North Carolina law – sometimes referred to as HB 589.

While there is a growing market for organic solar cells Â­Â­- they contain materials that are cheaper, more abundant, and more environmentally friendly than those used in typical solar panels - they also tend to be less efficient in converting sunlight to electricity than conventional solar cells.

Blockchain web services provider BlockCypher said it will work with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory on a demonstration project for renewable energy peer-to-peer payments using the open-source cryptocurrency Dash.

A clustering effect of plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) charging among homeowners, known as uncoordinated charging, could require future upgrades to electricity distribution infrastructure, according to research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

A metal that’s in demand for batteries is surging, and it’s not the one everyone’s talking about. Vanadium has soared more than 130 percent in the past year, outperforming better-known battery components like cobalt, lithium and nickel.

China’s wind power industry is expected to rally in 2018. Since July 2017, wind power projects in Inner Mongolia and Ningxia, which, in the aggregate, are scheduled to deliver an installed capacity of about 2.9 GW, have received governmental approval for construction, signaling a substantial loosening of restrictions on the construction of new plants.

A Chinese wind turbine maker’s conviction in Wisconsin over the theft of software code is threatening to ratchet up already tense trade negotiations between the U.S. and China. It also sent the shares of U.S. software maker American Superconductor Corp. surging.

On Wednesday, January 24 during a DistribuTECH networking breakfast, panelists — 3 women from the energy industry — described how they had overcome challenges and made sure that their careers advanced in the directions that they wanted to go.

Today the focus is completely on the solar tariffs, approved by President Trump on Monday January 22. We’ll discuss what we know will happen now that the U.S. will be adding tariffs to imported solar modules and we’ll discuss what won’t happen as a result of these tariffs. What will pricing look like at the end of 2017? Will the solar industry crash and burn? Watch and find out.

A microgrid at Blue Lake Rancheria, a tribal reservation in northern California, was the winner of the Distributed Energy Resource Integration 2018 POWERGRID International and DistribuTECH Project of the Year in San Antonio, Texas, today.

SBS Intl. Ltd. announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with PT. Indonesia Power to conduct a feasibility study to expand the 12 MW Phase I, currently being constructed, of the planned 150-MW tidal array project at the island of Lombok, in Indonesia.

Cuba is preparing to open its first solar park 100 percent-owned by foreign investors. Hive Energy of the United Kingdom aims to start construction mid-2018 on a 50-MW project in the Mariel Special Economic Development Zone, one of the largest solar ventures on the island.

The march to develop industry-agreed standards for Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS) took a major leap forward Monday as utilities and vendors connected in the effort and offered thoughts on the best path ahead

At DistribuTECH 2018, Bentley Systems and Siemens are presenting their new applications for power utilities and industrial power facilities as part of the partnership, which the entities announced last year.

The newly released applications will aid users by enhancing Bentley’s OpenUtilities network management, design, and operations applications with new integrated analysis, design optimization, and distributed energy resource (DER) decision support capabilities enabled by Siemens’ PSS SINCAL, according to the companies.

Much government and bureaucratic decision making is made in a vacuum, that is, the effect of the decision on the decision maker is small or nonexistent. In terms of the final tariff decision, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) made recommendations based on biased arguments.

On the first day of DTECH, Schneider Electric released the findings of a new report that shows that while 85 percent of major corporations are thinking about reducing energy use through energy efficiency programs and more than 50 percent plan to implement renewable energy in the near future, the vast majority of the companies surveyed were not considering how to actively participate in the incredible disruption that the energy industry is undergoing, such as microgrids, energy storage, and demand response strategies.

According to the report, just 30 percent have implemented or are actively planning to use energy storage, microgrids, combined heat and power, or some mix of the technologies and only 23 percent have demand response strategies or plan to in the near term.

Schneider views this as a problem because it says that companies need to understand now how to be active participants the way that energy is consumed and generated on their premises.

President Donald Trump has agreed to a recommendation by the International Trade Commission to grant U.S. solar manufacturers relief from unfair trade practices in the form of tariffs on solar cells and modules imported to the U.S.

In this episode of the Inside Renewable Energy podcast, we look at the issues the renewables and climate communities face before the midterms and the concrete actions they can take starting now to cause change.

According to a report released on January 16 by the Wind Energy Foundation (WEF), U.S. corporations have committed to signing deals result in 60 GW of renewable energy capacity being added to the grid in coming years. However, transmission planners are not accounting for this large uptick of potential near-term procurement.

Audi last week said that it is participating in a pilot project that is testing a smart energy network that uses software to control solar and batteries and interact with the main power grid. Audi is working with the project’s partners to run the pilot project for homes in southern Germany and northern Switzerland.

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author has explained how electric vehicles will disrupt and change transportation across the world. But first, Tony Seba — who is an instructor in disruption and clean energy at Stanford University’s Continuing Studies Program, explained to an audience at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, exactly what the nature is of a “disruptor.”

Off Grid Electric, a San Francisco-based company that develops rooftop solar and battery systems in Africa, has raised $55 million as it expands into Ghana. The Series D round was led by Helios Investment Partners and included GE Ventures, the venture capital subsidiary of General Electric Co., Off Grid said in a statement Thursday. The company’s Ghana expansion is part of a partnership with Electricite de France SA.

On January 23, DistribuTECH, one of the fastest growing conferences and expos in the country is set to open. Affectionately called “DTECH” by those in the know, the show is designed to showcase innovation in the transmission and distribution space, which most Renewable Energy World readers know, is undergoing a mega-transformation as solar, energy storage and other forms of distributed energy resources have a growing presence on the grid.

The Canadian government has allocated funding to support research and development of biomass projects for heating and power in an effort to innovate the country’s forest sector and combat the effects of climate change.

The World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi this week presented with some dizzying facts and figures that highlighted the challenge facing those who plan and build the smart cities of today and the future.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would announce a decision soon on whether to slap tariffs on imported solar panels, and quipped that when countries dump subsidized panels in the United States, "Everybody goes out of business."

Royal Dutch Shell Plc is investing in a U.S. solar energy developer, continuing its recent expansion into the electricity business. The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas producer will acquire a 44 percent stake in Nashville’s Silicon Ranch Corp., which owns and operates about 100 solar facilities across the U.S.

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted yesterday to approve and adopt a sweeping set of measures that will ensure the growth of renewable energy, energy efficiency, electric vehicles and advanced biofuels in the region.

Ugo Salerno, CEO of RINA Consulting explained in an interview that to date Egypt gets only 1 percent of its energy from renewables. With Salerno’s company’s help, however, Egypt will soon be the home of one of the largest solar PV projects in the world.

It’s just over one month since the Hornsdale Power Reserve was officially opened in South Australia. The excitement surrounding the project has generated acres of media interest, both locally and abroad.

Google this week won the Zayed Future Energy Prize for Best Corporation. The award is a public endorsement of the giant corporation’s work in renewables and clean energy — the company has been carbon neutral since 2007.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) this week launched the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, with the support of the governments of Germany, Norway and the United Arab Emirates.